Born in Toronto in 1946, Allen Smutylo is an Ontario College of Art honour graduate and a member of the Ontario Society of Artists.

For the past 38 years, his writing and his artwork (paintings, etchings and mixed media) have been based on experiences in some of the most remote places in the world. This includes sea kayaking and backpacking expeditions throughout the Canadian Arctic, the west, east and south coasts of Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, Labrador, the Amazon, Antarctica, the Himalaya, the Ganges, Baja, Rajasthan, Patagonia, West Africa, Morocco and Mongolia.

Allen Smutylo’s artwork is included in over 300 corporate and public collections. His work has been exhibited in dozens of solo shows and countless group shows nationally and internationally. He has won numerous awards including Graphex and the prestigious Sapparo International Print Biennial. His adventures and art were featured in Radio-Canada’s film The Last Frontier. He is represented by Mira Godard Gallery in Toronto, Thielsen Gallery in London, Circle Arts in Tobermory.

His books include: Wild Places Wild Hearts – Nomads of the Himalaya – written from his experiences from over 8 years of living and traveling with these iconic and little known people. The book won the Best Travel /Adventure Book Award at the Banff Mountain Book Festival and was described in a Globe and Mail’s rave review as “…a profound and poignant meditation on the connection between landscape and culture,” that they called, “…required reading.”

The Memory of Water, his second book, was short listed for: The General Governor’s Literary Award in Non-Fiction
The Best Travel Adventure Book, Banff Mountain Festival The Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction

His musical / drama, The Portrait, Smutylo’s first play, was selected for SpringWorks Festival in Stratford in 2014 and had a very successful 9-night run in Owen Sound at the Roxy Theatre in April ’15.